Making Stuff in My Beloved Brooklyn

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Grey Dress from V8787

I wanted a new dress to wear this past Wednesday so I made Vogue 8787 in a maxi length. The neckline is lovely and since I made a version of it a couple of years ago, it came together pretty easily, and the fit was great, I thought “what could go wrong?” A LOT, as it turns out.

Let me tell you where things went left.

The last time I made it, I was about 30lbs heavier. Now most people would take that into consideration, but I didn’t. I cut the same size and it was a hot baggy mess. So my “easy ” dress turned into a nightmare of picking out stitches (no problem with wovens, but a PITA with knits) and resewing pretty much every seam except the sleeves. I ended up cutting a total of 8 inches off the hip area and 4 inches off the waist. All of these changes were because of my issue with phantom weight which I define as the size your mind still sees even though your body has clearly changed physically. I’ll go into this more in a later post because it’s really affecting how and what I sew.

Anyhow, it’s overcast here (again), but I did my best with the pics.

My measuring was also completely off for the dress length AND the sleeve length. I had to add 4″ to the sleeves (you can see the seam in the picture below) and about 6″ to the bottom. There’s no explanation for this one; I swear I measured and re-measured the lengths. I’m chalking this up to being tired.

My zipper was super ripple-y, but I steamed it to within an inch of its life so it flattened out.

Finally, it’s fully lined with a thin black jersey from my stash.

I sewed the last seams on my dress about 3 hours before the event. Even though I took quite a few shortcuts, for the most part everything worked out and it fit very nicely. I was thinking about going back to fix a few things, but more likely I’ll just make a new one with my new measurements. For now, I’ll just be glad that I finished it – and had a good time while wearing it!